A week can be an eternity. It can be a period of such profound change that the life you were living just seven days prior feels like a distant, half-forgotten memory. My old life, the quiet, orderly existence of a solitary engineer, was now firmly in that category. My new life was a calibrated chaos, a delicate dance of logistics, interspecies communication, and a grocery bill that was rapidly approaching the GDP of a small nation.
The week since Astrid and Stormfly's arrival had been one of rapid, and surprisingly smooth, adjustment. After a series of frantic phone calls, a mountain of digital paperwork, and what I can only assume was a very confusing meeting at the Interspecies Cultural Exchange Agency, an official arrangement was made. Stormfly was now a temporary resident of my home, under my care, with the official justification being "environmental and psychological well-being." Astrid, as her primary host, was contractually obligated to perform daily check-ins, a bureaucratic stipulation that she seemed not to mind in the slightest.
Our mornings had found a new rhythm, a new subroutine. The kitchen, once a quiet space for my solitary coffee and toast, was now the bustling hub of a small, very hungry tribe. I'd come downstairs to find Toothless already at the reinforced kitchen table, his massive, his frame making the chair look like dollhouse furniture, his tail thumping an impatient, metronomic beat against the floor. Stormfly would be perched on a heavy-duty stool I'd brought in from the workshop, her posture more graceful, her movements more deliberate.
While the coffee brewed—a sacred ritual I refused to surrender—I would begin what I had come to call 'The Great Fish Distribution.' Two industrial-sized cans of tuna for Toothless, who would devour them with his usual primal gusto, face-first in the bowl. For Stormfly, I had discovered after two days of trial and error, it was whole salmon, which she would eat with a surprising, almost surgical precision, using her sharp talons to strip the meat from the bone. The sheer volume of fish I was now buying was staggering. My refrigerator looked less like a domestic appliance and more like the hold of a fishing trawler.
The most significant change, however, was the atmosphere. The oppressive cloud of anxiety that had surrounded Stormfly had vanished, replaced by a quiet, confident serenity. The house, which had often felt like a tense prison occupied by a lonely engineer and his possessive, non-verbal roommate, now felt… warm. It felt like a home.
That warmth was on full display this particular Saturday morning. The sun was bright, the air was clean, and a gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the oak tree in my backyard. From the sliding glass door of my living room, Astrid and I watched the two dragons.
They were playing. 'Playing' for them was a breathtaking display of power and grace. Toothless, for all his bulk and intimidating size, moved with the fluid speed of a panther. He would crouch low, his black scales seeming to drink the sunlight, before launching himself across the lawn in a silent, explosive burst of speed. Stormfly, in her grey dress and more avian movements, would leap into the air, her powerful legs propelling her a good fifteen feet upwards, twisting and banking in the air before landing with a soft thud. They would chase each other, weaving around the trees in a high-speed, interspecies game of tag, their happy chirps and rumbling growls a constant, melodic soundtrack.
At one point, they engaged in a sort of mock-wrestling, a tangle of blue and black limbs on the green grass. It was a gentle affair, a carefully controlled test of strength. Toothless, being larger and stronger, could have easily overpowered her, but he held back, allowing her to use her superior agility to twist out of his grasp. It was the play of two old friends who knew each other's strengths and limits intimately. They were a small, self-contained family, a remnant of a lost world, finding solace in each other's company.
"I could watch them all day," Astrid said, her voice soft. She was leaning against the doorframe, a mug of coffee cradled in her hands. She had shed the anxious, strained demeanor of a week ago, and the confident, brilliant Astrid I had always known was back, albeit with a new, softer edge.
"Me too," I admitted, taking a sip from my own mug. "It's better than television. Cheaper, too, provided they don't accidentally knock down the fence again."
She chuckled, a rich, genuine sound. "Stormfly's spines have a mind of their own when she gets excited. I spent two days patching drywall in my apartment." She looked at me, her expression turning more serious. "So, how is the new project coming along? The one with the advanced neural interface?"
We slipped into an easy, familiar conversation. It was a dance we had done a thousand times in college and in the early years of our careers—a rapid-fire exchange of ideas and theories. We talked about materials science, the tensile strength of the new carbon-fiber weave I was using, the power-to-weight ratio challenges she was facing with a new prototype engine. It was comfortable. It was stimulating. It was a piece of my old, normal life that I hadn't realized how much I had missed.
"You know," she said after a lull in the conversation, her eyes still on the dragons, "I've missed this."
"The technical jargon?" I asked with a smile. "I figured you got enough of that at the lab."
"No," she said, turning to look at me, her blue eyes clear and direct. "This. Just… talking to you. It feels like it's been years. Life just gets in the way, you know? The job is so demanding, the hours are insane. You spend all your time trying to get ahead, to prove yourself, and you forget to just… be."
"Tell me about it," I sighed, leaning against the frame opposite her. "My life was a loop. Wake up, work, tinker, sleep. I was so focused on solving the next engineering problem that I didn't realize I hadn't had a real conversation with anyone but my coffee machine in months."
We stood in a comfortable silence for a moment, watching Toothless successfully pin Stormfly, only to be immediately undone when she tickled a sensitive spot on his underside with her snout, causing him to collapse in a rumbling, purring heap.
"It's insane, isn't it?" Astrid murmured. "A month ago, my biggest problem was a flaw in the fuel intake manifold of a scramjet engine. Now, my biggest problem is trying to convince a seven-foot-tall dragon-woman that chicken nuggets are, in fact, food."
"My biggest problem a month ago was a bug in the predictive algorithm for a prosthetic hand," I countered. "Now, it's figuring out how to stop an eight-and-a-half-foot-tall, clingy dragon-man from following me into the shower because he's decided we're a team-building exercise."
She laughed, and the sound made something in my chest feel warm. "God, you got the weird one."
"Hey, your weird one shoots paralytic spines from her tail. It's a miracle you haven't woken up immobilized on your kitchen floor."
"It's a miracle you haven't been suffocated in your sleep by a hug," she shot back, a playful glint in her eyes.
Our lighthearted banter slowly faded, and a more serious, more profound understanding settled between us. We were the only two people on the planet, perhaps in the universe, who truly understood what the other was going through. The shared burden, the shared absurdity of it all, was a powerful, unbreakable bond. I found myself looking at her, really looking at her, not as the fierce rival from my past, but as the sharp, funny, and surprisingly vulnerable woman who had become my partner in this bizarre new reality. I noticed the way the morning light caught the gold in her hair, the faint sprinkle of freckles across her nose.
She must have seen something in my expression, because her smile softened, her gaze grew more intense. The space between us, which had started as a respectable, friendly distance, had somehow shrunk. We were closer now, the air charged with an unspoken acknowledgment. An acknowledgment that this strange, chaotic turn our lives had taken had brought us back to a place we hadn't been in a very long time: side-by-side, facing the world together.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
The sound was sharp, loud, and brutally official. It shattered the peaceful morning moment like a rock through a stained-glass window.
In the backyard, the dragons' play ceased instantly. Toothless shot to his feet, his head snapping towards the front of the house, a low, warning growl already rumbling in his chest. Stormfly rose beside him, her posture alert, the crown of spines around her head flaring slightly in alarm.
Astrid and I exchanged a worried glance. I never got unexpected visitors. Packages were left on the porch. The mailman came at noon. A knock this sharp, at this hour, could only mean one thing.
"Agency," we both said at the same time.
I felt a knot of dread tighten in my stomach. "I'll get it."
"I'm coming with you," she said, her voice firm, leaving no room for argument. She placed her coffee mug on the counter and followed me as I walked through the house. I could feel the heavy, silent tread of Toothless following us, a massive, scaly shadow of protective intent.
I took a deep breath, trying to school my features into something resembling 'normal, unsuspecting citizen,' and opened the door.
Standing on my porch, looking as severe and out-of-place as ever in her crisp black suit, was Agent Smith. Her smile was a thin, brittle line, and her eyes darted nervously past me, catching sight of Astrid, and then widening slightly as she saw the massive silhouette of Toothless looming in the dim hallway behind us.
"Mr. Haddock. Ms. Hofferson," she said, her voice strained with a forced cheerfulness that did nothing to hide her unease. "Good. You're both here. Saves me a trip."
"Agent Smith," I said, my tone flat. "What can we do for you? Is there a problem with the paperwork?
Her forced smile twitched. "No, no, nothing like that. The paperwork is… fine. I'm here because there's been a development. An important one. I have something I need to discuss with you, Mr. Haddock." She paused, her gaze flicking nervously to Toothless again. "It concerns your placement."